Article
Building Materials Made of Wood Waste a Solution to Achieve
the Sustainable Development Goals
Dorin Maier
Citation: Maier, D. Building
Materials Made of Wood Waste a
Solution to Achieve the Sustainable
Development Goals. Materials 2021,
14, 7638. https://doi.org/10.3390/
ma14247638
Academic Editor: Farooq Sher
Received: 13 November 2021
Accepted: 7 December 2021
Published: 11 December 2021
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neu-
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Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Li-
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tivecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Materials 2021, 14, 7638. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma14247638
Faculty of Civil Engineering, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, 400020 Cluj-Napoca, Romania;
dorin.maier@ccm.utcluj.ro
Abstract: In order to reduce the impact of human activities on the environment, in 2015, the United
Nations launched the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, proposing 17 Sustainable Devel-
opment Goals with 169 associated targets. It is well-known that the construction industry is a major
contributor to global CO2 emissions, and if a solution to reduce construction activity is not possible,
considering the increasing population, then other solutions must be developed to decrease their
negative environmental impact. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to investigate whether
the use of wood waste as a building material can be a solution to achieve the Sustainable Develop-
ment Goals. The research procedure included a bibliometric literature search, a scientometric anal-
ysis and an in-depth discussion. The analysis was done with the help of the software VOSviewer
and Bibliometrix; the data were extracted mainly from the ISI Web of Science database. The extrac-
tion of data was done using the PRISMA method, and thus a sample of 212 peer-reviewed journal
articles was established. The main results indicate an increasing interest in this topic in the last sev-
eral years, as well as a switch from considering wood waste as just a source to generate heat and
energy to the use of wood waste as a building material. The main uses of wood waste as a building
material are in the composition of particleboards and in various mortar and concrete mixtures. The
field of wood waste has many potential directions towards future development, and if the immense
treasure represented by the forests, and implicitly the wood, is used efficiently, it can be a good
solution to the problem of sustainable development of society.
Keywords: sustainable development goals; wood waste; construction waste; wood materials; build-
ing materials
1. Introduction
Modern society, in its rapid race for development and prosperity, is faced with new
and more demanding challenges on all levels. Environmental protection and issues re-
garding climate change are some of the challenges that are becoming more and more pre-
sent in our everyday life. The construction industry is one of the human activities that
puts a lot of pressure on the environment, as it needs to deliver more and better spaces
for a growing population. The process of construction also generates pollution and waste
all over the world. In this context, there is a need to find new and better ways to construct
while having a lower impact on the environment.
As a response to all of the new challenges of modern society, in 2015, the United
Nations launched the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development [1] with the purpose of
ending poverty and set the world on a path of peace, prosperity, and opportunity for all
on a healthy planet. At the core of the 2030 Agenda are the 17 Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs) and 169 associated targets. The Sustainable Development Goals cover a
wide range of societal concerns, such as ending poverty; ensuring gender equality and
quality education for all; sanitation; climate action; providing water and maintaining
healthy wellbeing; energy and environment; and peace and social justice. The European
www.mdpi.com/journal/materials
Materials 2021, 14, 7638 2 of 18

Commission report from 2020 [2] emphasizes the interconnection of the goals and high-
lights the importance of global partnership for their successful implementation. The latest
reports [3] show that there are delays in the achievement program. In this context, the
purpose of this research is to analyze and identify solutions to help the achievement of
these goals from a construction industry point of view.
People are more aware of the higher urban living standards offered by cities, and
consequently, there is an increased pressure on cities to develop and grow their size so as
to receive more people. In a report by the United Nations [4], it is shown that of the total
world population, half live in cities, and some of the projections indicate an increase of
60% in the urban population through 2030. The paradox is that cities occupy only 3% of
the Earth’s surface, but they use 60% of resources, produce 75% of global carbon emissions
and consume 60–80% of global energy. All of this has a serious environmental and social
impact, and thus an urgent need arises to find green building materials that can help the
achievement of sustainable development [5].
It is known that the construction industry is a major contributor to the global CO2
emissions, mainly through embodied and operational energy use, and thus there must be
developed solutions to decrease the negative impact of its activity on the environment. If
a solution of less construction is not possible due to the increasing population, then better
building solutions must be developed. The construction process implies the use of large
quantities of natural resources, and at the same time, some of the construction products
have a negative effect on the indoor environment and human health [6]. Concrete is the
most used building material due to its many advantages and ease of use. The other prin-
cipal buildings materials are steel and ceramics blocks. All of them have a major disad-
vantage: they need high energy quantities in their production process. The only ecological
building material with low energy consumption is wood. It not only needs low quantities
of energy to be produced, but it also traps CO2 during the life of its structure.
Forests are a huge treasure as sought after and necessary as other sources of raw
materials. Tree trunks and crowns are true accumulators of solar energy and stores of
precious organic matter. Wood has been used since the earliest times of human existence,
sharing with stone and clay the glory of birthing the first tools, the first homes and the
first means of human defense. Wood is a natural, renewable building material, having an
inhomogeneous (anisotropic) characteristic, made up of a large number of plant cells or-
ganized into specialized tissues, also called anatomical elements, which are very diverse.
They differ in their lifetime and tree functions, shape and size, position in the tree and
quantity or number. Many of the cells die during the life of the tree, retaining only the role
of ensuring the mechanical strength of the tissues in its composition. The way in which
the anatomical elements observable with the naked eye are grouped is called the macro-
scopic structure. It is important to know this because, depending on its appearance, the
various species of wood can be identified and the most convenient areas of technological
use of the wood can be established.
Before advancing with the discussion, it is important to highlight that we need to
speak about using sustainable wood in construction, meaning that we need to know the
origin of the wood elements. In the overall context of the research, the achievement of the
Sustainable Development Goals, it is important not to solve a problem by using wood in
the construction process and thereby create another problem, i.e., massive illegal defor-
estation. In this sense, the use of certified wood materials, wood that was harvested re-
sponsibly from well-managed forests that are continuously replenished, is mandatory,
and we must ensure that there is no damage to the surrounding environment or to native
flora and fauna.
A major challenge for the construction industry is also the management of waste pro-
duced in the building stages or in the demolition cases. To have an idea about the size of
the phenomenon, in [7], it is stated that construction and demolition waste is the largest
waste stream worldwide (30–40% of total solid waste). According to a report from Euro-
stat [8], in the European Union, the construction industry is the biggest contributor to
Materials 2021, 14, 7638 3 of 18

waste, accounting for 36% of the total solid waste produced in 2018. In the case of the
United States, this proportion was close to 67% (534 million tons) [9], and in China, the
percent was 30–40% (2.36 billion tons) [10,11]. Given the negative impact of construction
waste on the environment and the large amount of waste generated by building activities,
finding solutions to better manage and use the waste is gathering more and more im-
portance.

Research Purpose
Considering the context described, the main research question of this study can be
formulated as “Are wood-based building materials, especially those made of wood waste, a solu-
tion to achieve sustainable development goals?”.
In order to respond to this question, the research procedure included a bibliometric
literature search, a scientometric analysis and an in-depth discussion. The data used for
this study were extracted mainly from the ISI Web of Science database, while a small part
was obtained from Scopus database. For a more coherent extraction of data, the PRISMA
(Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) method was used.
The literature highlights [12] the importance of the ability to analyze the evolution of sci-
entific literature over time and also of revealing the intellectual relationships in the field.
The structure of the paper follows the structure of a scientific paper. After the short
introduction and the purpose of the research, the methods and methodology of the study
are presented. The next part of the paper is reserved for presentation of the main results
obtained from conducting the research, and the responses to the research question are
presented. The paper ends with the presentation of the main conclusions and with the list
of bibliographic titles used in this study.

2. Materials and Methods

According to the research objectives, the research procedures include a bibliometric
literature search, a scientometric analysis and an in-depth discussion. The bibliometric
literature search is done in two parts. The first part is the process of interrogating the sci-
entific database using certain keywords, and the second part is the process of screening
and removing all irrelevant papers. The working plan of these methods includes the se-
lection of articles in a sample database followed by filtering and refining the bibliographic
data.

2.1. Data Collection

The main data used in this research were identified by using the ISI Web of Science
database (ISI WoS). The interrogation was made using the keyword “wood waste”. The
number of articles in the resulting search process are presented in Table 1.

Table 1. Search criteria.

Search Search Criteria Nb. of Articles

Title “wood waste” 1348
Document type Article, Review 1059
Language English 956
Material science, Engineering, Construction Building
Research area 542
Technology

After the preliminary keyword searching, it was necessary to screen the articles in
order to select the articles most relevant to the purpose of the study. This process was
done using the guidelines of the PRISMA method (Preferred Reporting Items for System-
atic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) proposed by the researchers Moher et al. [13]. According
to their research, the PRISMA approach indicates four steps to identify and extract the
data: identification, screening, eligibility and inclusion.
Materials 2021, 14, 7638 4 of 18

In the first step of the PRISMA approach, the ISI WoS database was interrogated for
articles having “wood waste” as their topic of research. The initial literature search was
conducted in the beginning of October 2021. The search indicated a large number of arti-
cles, and by applying the filters in the PRISMA approach, 542 articles were processed.
In the screening step, from the initial number of articles were eliminated documents
without author names and documents identified as book chapters, as well as documents
that had a subject area other than environmental science, ecology, engineering, other sci-
ence technology topics, construction building technology and other related topics. On this
step, 47 articles were eliminated, resulting in a database of 495 articles.
The third phase of the PRISMA flow is checking the eligibility of the papers. Alt-
hough this is the most time-consuming phase of the flow, the success of the research is
directly influenced by this step. In this phase, the 495 papers were analyzed by reading
the titles and abstracts to evaluate whether they corresponded to the purpose of this pa-
per. The duplicates were eliminated first, mainly due to the return from both databases,
followed by all the papers that did not correspond to the purpose of this study. The final
number of articles included in the study was 212.
A scientometric analysis was conducted based on the selected 212 papers. The pur-
pose of this analysis was to comprehensively understand the research field and to provide
deeper insights than the ones previous studied.

2.2. Data Extraction and Analysis

In order to perform the analysis, the final database, formed by 212 journal articles,
needed to be exported in a working format. The format of the export data file was chosen
based on the files supported by the used software. In this research, for data analysis, two
software were used, VOSviewer (version 1.6.17, developed by Nees Jan van Eck and Ludo
Waltman at Leiden University's Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden, The
Netherlands) and Bibliometrix (version 3.1, developed by Massimo Aria and Corrado
Cuccurullo, Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Naples Federico II, Na-
ples, Italy) . The choice of these two software was made considering that both programs
are freely available to the bibliometric research community. One of the main functionali-
ties of the VOSviewer software is the possibility of displaying bibliometric maps, thus
making it quite easy to interpret the data [14]. The information obtained by exporting the
data from the scientific database contains the full range of resources available, including
the title of the article, the author keywords, the keywords plus, the author’s name and the
citation information, including the reference list of all the articles. In order to use the data
in the software, the exported data need to be further analyzed and processed; this was
done manually. The reason behind this is the fact that in order to generate accurate results,
the VOSviewer and Bibliometrix software need a certain uniformity in the format infor-
mation. This is also one of the reasons for working more with the ISI Web of Science da-
tabase due to its greater uniformity in the exported data. The process of data standardiza-
tion occupied a large percentage of the time needed to complete this study.

3. Results and Discussion

3.1. Number of Publications
In the initial stage of research, the annual evolution of the published articles was an-
alyzed (Figure 1). The purpose of this analysis is to identify the trend evolution of the
researchers’ interest for subjects related to the use of wood waste. The graph from the
Figure 1 was constructed using Microsoft Excel software, considering all the papers in-
dexed in the ISI Web of Science, from 1975 to 2020. The grouping of the articles according
to their publication years was taken directly from the ISI WoS database. The graph indi-
cates on the x-axis the years of publication and on the y-axis the number of articles pub-
lished each year.
Materials 2021, 14, 7638 5 of 18

65
60
55
50

Number of articles
45
40
35
61
30
25
20
15
10 14
5
0
1976
1978
1980
1982
1984
1986
1988
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
2014
2016
2018
2020
Publication Years

Figure 1. Annual evolution of the number of published articles on “wood waste” topic.

The data from Figure 1 show that the number of articles addressing the topic of
“wood waste” varies each year, but a general increasing trend can be seen. The annual
evolution of the number of articles reveals that the number of articles published each year
from 1976 to 2017 was under 10 articles per year. In 2008, the interest to this topic started
to rise and 14 articles were published, and the trend continue to increase, reaching an
amount of 61 articles published in 2020. The increasing trend of the number of articles can
be explained by the increasing interest given to the protection of the environment in the
last several years, and in this context, we can expect that the trend will continue to grow.

3.2. Journal Analysis

The interest for the subject of wood waste increased substantially in the last several
years, especially due to the current situation characterized by a greater and greater aware-
ness of the impact of human activity on the environment. The researchers focused their
attention on these subjects and published their work in various journals. The journals with
the largest numbers of articles on the wood waste subject at the moment of performing
this search are presented in Table 2.

Table 2. Top 10 journals by the number of published articles with wood waste topic.

Nr.crt Journal Name Article No. TC

1 Journal of Cleaner Production 31 724
2 Waste Management 29 899
3 Bioresources 22 51
4 Construction and Building Materials 20 719
5 Journal of Hazardous Materials 14 481
6 Fuel 13 401
7 Energy & Fuels 11 185
8 Polymer Composites 9 216
9 Resources, Conservation & Recycling 9 271
10 Forest Products Journal 8 70

Data presented in Table 2 revealed that the journal with the highest number of pub-
lished articles related to wood waste (36 articles) is the Journal of Cleaner Production. The
second journal, in which a number of 31 articles were published, is Waste Management,
and the third is the journal Bioresources with 22 articles. From the impact point of view,
Materials 2021, 14, 7638 6 of 18

calculated mainly by the total citations obtained by each journal, the source with the great-
est impact, with a total of 899 total citations, is the Waste Management journal. The second
greatest journal impact is the Journal of Cleaner Production, with 724 total citations, followed
in third place by Construction and Building Materials, with 719 total citations.
For a better understanding of the impact of the journals in the research field, a journal
co-citation analysis map was generated using VOSviewer (Figure 2). The map is com-
posed of a series of nodes and lines indicating the relative number of co-citations for a
certain journal and their interconnections. The size of the bubble indicates the number of
co-citations; the greater the size, the greater the number of co-citations for that journal.
The position of the journals on the map is given by their co-citation frequency [12]. The
grouping of the journals indicates a series of similarities of the published articles. The map
also contains a series of lines that are used to indicate the links of co-citations between
journals. The VOSviewer software uses colors for better visualization of the data, so for
each group of journals, a certain color is being used. The journals sharing the same color
are considered to have similarities in their published articles [15].

Figure 2. The co-citation network analysis of main sources of articles.

The generation of the map is based on a total of 5221 sources; the minimum number
of citations of a source was set to 30, resulting in a number of 71 sources that met the
threshold. The journal co-citation analysis generated four distinct and coherent clusters of
journals on the network map. The cluster with the greatest number of items, 29 items, is
the red cluster. In this cluster are journals such as Forest Products Journal, Wood and Fiber
Science, the Journal of Applied Polymer Science, Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manu-
facturing and Composites Part B: Engineering. The journal with the greatest number of direct
citations 192 is the Journal of Applied Polymers Science, which has a total link strength of
3948.
The second cluster by number of items is the green one, with 18 items. In this cluster,
we can find journals such as Bioresource Technology, Fuel, Energy Fuel, Energy, Renewable
and Sustainable Energy Reviews and the Journal of Analytical and Applied Pyrolysis. In this
cluster, four journals stand out. The journal with the greatest number of direct citations is
Bioresource Technology, having 387 direct citations and a total link strength of 9138. The
Materials 2021, 14, 7638 7 of 18

second journal of importance in this cluster is Fuel, with 316 direct citations and a total
link strength of 6823. Another two journals having around 200 direct citations are the Jour-
nal of Analytical and Applied Pyrolysis, with 200 direct citations and a total link strength of
4874, and the journal Energy Fuels, with 199 direct citations and a total link strength of
4292.
The third cluster by number of items, with 12 items, is the blue cluster. In this cluster,
we find journals such as the Journal of Hazardous Materials, Chemosphere and Environmental
Science & Technology. The most influential journal from this cluster is the Journal of Hazard-
ous Materials, with 222 direct citations and a total link strength of 4864.
The fourth cluster, with nine items, is the yellow one. The journals grouped here are
Waste Management, the Journal of Cleaner Production, Construction and Building Materials and
Resources, Conservation & Recycling. Even if the number of journals grouped in this cluster
is very small, this cluster has three of the most highlighted journals on the entire map. The
journal with the highest number of direct citations (430) is the journal Construction and
Building Materials, with a total link strength of 7093. The journal situated close to the center
of the map, with 373 direct citations and a total link strength of 7376, is the journal Waste
Management. The third journal highlighted on the map is the Journal of Cleaner Production,
with 361 direct citations and a total link strength of 7790.
The last cluster, having only five items, is the purple one. The journals grouped here
are Industrial Crops and Products, with 170 citations and a total link strength of 4469; Car-
bohydrate Polymers; Cellulose and Green Chemistry, all of them having few citations.
From the sources of information point of view, the co-citation analysis revealed five
main directions of research according to the journals where the articles selected for the
study were published. The first category is represented by the study of wood from its
composition, at the cellular level; this is the group of journals grouped in the red cluster
in Figure 2. Another direction of research is represented by the use of wood as a fuel so-
lution, in particular to generate energy, and is the green category of journals. The third
category is represented by journals that publish papers dealing with the use of wood as a
building material, either in the form of construction elements or as building materials
made out of wood waste.
Another category of journals approaches the subject of wood waste from the ecolog-
ical point of view, dealing with the environmental issues related to the use of wood. The
last category, a small category, focuses mainly on the chemical part of wood, from agri-
cultural food chemistry to green chemistry solutions.

3.3. The Topical Focus in the Wood Waste Field of Research

In the next phase of the research, a keyword co-occurrence analysis was performed
(Figure 3). As in the case of journal analysis, the output of the keyword co-occurrence
analysis is a network map highlighting the most used keywords, grouping the closely
related words and showing their relations with the other keywords. In their work, re-
searchers Zupic and Cater [12] explain that we can interpret the concepts described by the
keywords as being closely related when there is a certain co-occurrence of the words in
documents. The results of the keyword co-occurrence analysis indicate the most used key-
words by the authors and can also indicate trends and patterns in the studied area [16,17].
Materials 2021, 14, 7638 8 of 18

Figure 3. The keywords co-occurrence network map.

The keywords co-occurrence map was generated based on 2240 keywords found in
the articles selected for this study. By establishing a limit of 15 minimum occurrences for
the keyword to be included in the results, just 27 keywords met the threshold. The key-
word co-occurrence analysis also offers important insight regarding other rising topics
related to the studied area [18]. The main aspects visualized in the keyword co-occurrence
map are the occurrence of the keywords based on their prevalence and the evolution in
time of their popularity [19,20].
On the network map can be observed three clusters for the keywords occurrence
analysis. According to the sizes of the clusters, the red cluster has twelve items, the green
cluster has nine items and the blue cluster has six items.
The center of the map, as expected, is dominated by the keyword “wood waste”,
from the red cluster, with an occurrence of 45 times and a total link strength of 74. Other
keywords highlighted on the map are “biomass”, “combustion”, “pyrolysis” and “waste
wood” from the green cluster; “kinetics”, “adsorption”, “biochar” and “activated carbon”
from the blue cluster; and “behavior”, “performance”, “strength” and “mechanical prop-
erties” from the red cluster.
Materials 2021, 14, 7638 9 of 18

The keywords analysis revealed an evolution in the main approaches regarding the
use of wood. In the first phase of the research, the keywords were grouped into three main
categories, which confirms the grouping from the journal analysis. One category of key-
words grouped words such as wood waste, recycling, mechanical properties, concrete,
strength, wood and performance. All of these words are used in the construction industry
and are specific to building materials characteristics, so these can be considered the group
of papers oriented towards the use of wood as a building material. Another category is
formed by keywords such as biomass, combustion, gasification, pyrolysis, temperature
and waste wood. In this category, we can find papers which approach the wood study
from the perspective of wood generating energy. The last category revealed by the key-
words analysis is a category of research oriented towards the study of wood as a living
plant and its ecological potential. Here, we find words such as activated carbon, adsorp-
tion, biochar, kinetics and water.
At this point, it is important to clarify some aspects regarding the presence of two
keywords, “wood waste” and “waste wood”, in different clusters on the network map.
Even if these initially seem like a mistake because both of them are referring to waste
produced by the use of wood at different stages, a distinction must be made. The term
“wood waste” is usually used when it expresses a quantity of scraps or some pieces of
wood that cannot be used in construction for different reasons, either due to dimensional
limitations or because they are leftovers from a construction element or from different
temporary structures, e.g., formworks and so on. The same words are used to express the
quantity of wood resulting from pallets, wood used in the transport industry or other
waste resulting from the use of wood in various forms. When we speak about pieces of
wood of low quality (which cannot be used for something else), contaminated wood or
pieces of wood from low-quality species (which are mainly used as fuel for fire), in these
cases, we use the term “waste wood”; that is why the keyword “wood waste” is grouped
in the building materials category and the keyword “waste wood” is placed in the cate-
gory of energy producer.

3.3.1. Trend Topic Analysis

Analyzing further the keywords used by authors to better express their topic inter-
ests, a trend topic analysis was made. The analysis was made using Bibliometrix software,
and the graph from Figure 4 was generated. The trend topic plot, constructed based on
the main keywords used by the authors of the papers, reveals an evolution and a change
in the approach related to the use of wood in the period from 2008 to 2021.
Materials 2021, 14, 7638 10 of 18

Figure 4. The trend topics plot.

In the generation of the trend topics, only papers published from 2008 to 2021 were
introduced. Other graphical parameters refer to the use of the author’s keywords field,
with a minimum word frequency of five, and the number of words to be considered per
year was set to five. In these conditions, from Figure 4, the main keywords used in each
year can be observed. The lines represent the years when that word was used; highlighted
by a bubble on the line is the most frequent time that that word was used and in what
year. The size of the bubbles represents the frequency of use for each term; the bigger the
bubble, the higher the frequency of use. The results are similar to the results shown in the
VOSviewer. The most frequently used term is “wood waste”, with a maximum frequency
of 45 in 2017.
It is also interesting to observe how the trend was generated. If in 2013, the most
frequent word was “treated wood”, then the research evolved, and in 2014, “pyrolysis”
was explored more, followed by words such as “bio-oil”, “biomass”, “sustainability” and
“wood waste”. In the last several years, words such as “recycling”, “circular economy”,
“mechanical proprieties” and “composite” appear. Just by reading these keywords, it can
be seen that although wood waste was mainly analyzed in the early 2010s from the com-
bustible point of view as a method to generate energy, in the last five years, in the context
of rising to the challenge of environmental protection, the researchers have tried to look
at wood waste as a solution to be used in the construction industry as building materials.
The trend topic shows a change point in the approaches of the wood topics. In the
first part of the time interval, the most used keywords indicate that most topics were re-
lated to the use of wood as an energy producer. Until 2017, the most used keywords were
“treated wood”, “pyrolysis”, “gasification”, “biomass” and “combustion”. After 2017,
other words appear to be more used, such as “biochar”, “recycling”, “circular economy”,
“mechanical proprieties”, “thermal proprieties” and “composite”. All of these indicate the
switch in the last five years from the consideration of wood as just a source to generate
heat or energy to the use of wood as a building material and thus as a solution to decrease
the environmental impact of buildings and of the construction industry in general.
Materials 2021, 14, 7638 11 of 18

3.3.2. Thematic Evolution of the Keywords

Having these results and observing a turning point in the evolution of the trend topic,
in the next phase, also with the use of Bibliometrix software, a thematic evolution of the
keywords was generated (Figure 5).

Figure 5. The thematic evolution of the keywords.

The map was constructed considering the turning point of the year 2017; thus, two
time intervals were generated: 2008 to 2017 and 2018 to 2021. The thematic evolution of
the keywords was generated with the following parameters: the number of words was set
to 250; minimum cluster frequency to 5; weight index inclusion as index weighted by
word-occurrence; minimum weight index to 0.1 and number of labels for each cluster to
1.
The results shown in Figure 5 confirm the results from Figure 4. If, in the period of
2008–2017, the most used keywords were “activated carbon”, “bio-oil” and “treated
wood”, in the following time period of 2018 to 2021, the importance of activated carbon
and bio-oil decreased. The “treated wood” disappears, and it is replaced by “circular econ-
omy”, which also includes a part of “biochar”. In the last several years, we can observe
the increased importance given to wood waste products, especially in the form of building
materials to be used in future constructions to decrease the carbon footprint of buildings.
Another important category of materials was oriented towards topics related to waste
wood, and it can be seen that the approaches are focused on solutions to generate energy
either as pyrolysis or as biochar, but a large part of the approaches are also oriented to-
wards the use of wood ash, continuing the cycle. Most of the use of ash is also in the
building materials segment; ash is used as a component of concrete mix in order to de-
crease the energy demands in producing it. From this analysis, an increasing importance
given to topics related to the production of new building materials made out of wood
waste can be observed, as well as to finding ways to use waste wood other than as a heat
generator.
Materials 2021, 14, 7638 12 of 18

3.3.3. Topic Dendrogram

The conceptual structure of the used keywords, and thus the essence of the main
topics studied in the field of wood waste, can go further on, and in Figure 6, the topic
dendrogram is presented.

Figure 6. The topic dendrogram.

The topic dendrogram was generated based on factorial analysis with the following
parameters: the method to generate the dendrogram was multiple correspondence analy-
sis; field author keywords; the number of terms was set at 20 and the number of clusters
was allowed to be chosen automatically by the program. The topics were grouped into
two clusters. The first cluster is formed by “circular economy”, “waste” and “treated
wood”, and in the second cluster, “adsorption” was coupled with “biochar” and “acti-
vated carbon”. The next part is formed by “sustainability” and all other keywords that
contribute to the sustainability challenges.
In general, it can be observed that the main ideas from the previous analysis were
confirmed; thus, in the first group are issues related to the implementation of the circular
economy by using waste and treated wood products. In the other group can be found
topics related to the properties of wood to store carbon and to obtain biochar, as well as
the sustainability aspects from the two points of view, wood as a building material and
wood as a combustion material.

3.4. Research Topics Addressed in the Wood Waste Field of Research

As it can be seen from the above sections, the topics addressed in the wood waste
field of research are focused on several directions. Almost all the research is based on the
situation created by the rapid growth of population and the need to provide better waste
management, to create more energy to maintain a constant temperature, especially in the
cold periods of the year, and to offer more living spaces. Disposal of wood waste in land-
fills also creates other problems due to the fact that wood disposal could result in methane
emissions and/or leaching of hazardous constituents polluting water or soil. At the same
time, large quantities of unused wood waste are produced in both the extraction of raw
material and its transformation into building materials, as well as in construction technol-
ogy. This means that it is a low-cost source of woody biomass [21] that makes it suitable
Materials 2021, 14, 7638 13 of 18

to be used in various forms to decrease environmental impacts and also to decrease the
cost of elements.
The focus of this study was on wood waste, so studies such as [22,23], which deal
with the same situations [24,25] but are focusing on food waste and sludge or rice straws,
were not fully analyzed. Other studies, such as [26], take into consideration forest residues
and agricultural wastes with the purpose of creating biomass. The transformation of agro
industrial waste into building insulation material [27] is also analyzed.
Considering that the unprecedented growth level of the modern society burdens the
anthroposphere with serious resource supply risks and waste generation, the idea of a
“circular economy” is starting to be more and more feasible, and the implementation of
the three Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle) is beginning to take shape [7,28]. In the construction
industry, more and more studies [28,29] are adhering to this challenge and focusing on
the development of various solutions to better use construction [30] and demolition waste
[9,31]. The study in [32] explores this idea and analyzes the wood waste hierarchy frame-
work in the European region.
From a building materials point of view, a big category of research is dedicated to
the use of wood waste in particleboard production. In [33], it is stated that “the produc-
tion of high-quality boards from alternative lignocellulosic raw materials is feasible and
brings a series of ecological and economic benefits”. Particleboard can be obtained by us-
ing waste wood formwork, as shown in [34,35], and can be transformed into cement-
bonded particleboard using MOC (magnesium oxide cement) as a green cementitious
binder; thus, it presents a practical and eco-friendly management option for construction
wood waste. In the particleboard mix, other materials besides the wood waste can also be
added, e.g., tire fibers or biomass ash [36].
Another use of wood waste is in the mixture of building materials, such as concrete
or mortar. The study in [37] addresses the use of waste aggregate in gypsum mortars. It is
shown that even if the use of waste decreases the mechanical strength of the product, in
some situations it can be used properly. Other ways of using wood waste is in the form of
ash, which can be added to a mortar [38,39] or concrete mixture [40,41]. The researchers
in [42] state that “wood waste ash seems to be promising to use as pozzolanic partial re-
placement material for cement, with no strength loss and leading to enhanced durability
and thus contributing to sustainable construction”. In [43], it is demonstrated that “the
utilization of waste wood materials both in the form of wood powders and wood fibers
provides a greener alternative for the waste recycling of industrial debris with respect to
the existing waste management options, as well as saves natural resources and the CO2
emissions required to produce the raw materials for the manufacture of cement mortars”.
The use of biochar as a component in the concrete mixture is studied [44], and it is shown
that, if used in an optimal percentage, the addition of biochar can have positive effect on
the concrete and thus can help to develop the circular economy building material.
The use of wood waste in the composition of low-strength concrete materials is ad-
dressed also [45,46]. In [46], it is shown that “proper utilization of sawdust in concrete will
conserve the environment by reducing the use of natural resources, reducing the volume
of waste material, and reducing CO2 emissions”. The new material Wood-Crete, devel-
oped by the researchers of [45], indicates the possibility of using wood waste and concrete
products for in-fills for wall panels and hollow blocks or for thermal insulating material.
The good properties of the wood wool–cement composite material are highlighted by [47],
which shows that “the material presents excellent mechanical, chemical and biological
properties. However, the understanding of its mechanical behavior is rather limited”. The
researcher developed a hierarchically structured model to describe the mechanical behav-
ior under compressive stress. The wood waste from pallets was also studied as a replace-
ment for spruce in wood wool–cement composite. The researchers [48] indicate that the
use of waste wood is successful up to 50%, but above these limits, “the strand morphology
is too heterogeneous to guarantee a good reinforcement”.
Materials 2021, 14, 7638 14 of 18

The incompatibility between wood and cement is analyzed by [49], and it is proven
that “the alkaline hydrolysis was found as the most effective treatment for the suppression
of inhibitory substances and the highest decrease on mechanical properties of resulting
composites”. There is obviously a need to find a proper balance in the wood-and-cement
composition, which is quite difficult to determine. A solution to this problem is proposed
by [50] by developing a model to calculate the competitive water uptake of natural strands
(wood wool) and cement in wood–cement composites.
The same conclusion of a proper and optimum ratio between cement and wood was
observed in [51], where the researchers studied the possibility of using demolition waste
in unfired bricks manufacturing. They underline that “the substitution of a natural soil by
recycled targets modifies the target binder chemical reactions. This could be taken into
account for the optimization of the target formulation and binder kind and dosage selec-
tion to optimize the unfired brick manufacturing from technical and environmental points
of view”.
The thermal insulation properties of the wood products [52,53] are another topic
addressed in the literature [54,55]. In [56], it is shown that the use of 5% date palm fibers
in gypsum mix can contribute to the obtention of a composite material with good mechan-
ical and thermal proprieties. The possibility of using low-density materials for thermal
insulation is presented in [57]. The use of various wastes in cementitious composite is
studied by [58], which highlights the use of these products in the case of construction
elements with low strength requirements and the necessity to use local waste in order to
limit the quantity of energy used by transporting.
The use of wood waste in the form of biochar is another large category of research
[59]. The possibility of using wood waste as a renewable energy resource is another topic
approached in the literature. In [60,61], the importance of better using wood biomass as a
renewable source of energy, as well as the implication of developing modern ways of pro-
duction and utilization of woody biomass, is studied. The combustion behavior of wood
waste was studied in [62], and they underline that “waste wood seem to be suitable with
combustion. However, the high nitrogen content gives rise to higher NOx production and
would require more severe gas cleaning. Moreover, the presence of external pollution may
raise specific issues due to the presence of fine particles, which make combustion more
difficult, and may impose a separation step between fine and coarse fractions”.
Waste wood materials come from different sources, and one of the biggest problems
is generated by the reuse of contaminated wood materials [63]. One approach is to use
industrial wood waste, for example wood-based panels, in pyrolysis technology and
transform them into pyrolytic gas, liquid bio-oil and solid activated carbon [64]. Other
studies shows that the use of glued wood waste as a combustion material is very prob-
lematic but can be done in medium or large plants ”where with economic investments it
is possible to design cutting-edge combustors” [65].
The use of wood waste as adsorbents from biomass waste is also studied. Wood-
derived activated carbons are efficient adsorbents that can separate a wide range of or-
ganic and inorganic pollutants. In [66], it is shown that “conversion of abundant wood
biomass into activated carbon can have several applications such as manufacturing of gas
mask filter, drinking water filter bed, municipal wastewater treatment plant, treatment of
dyes and metal-ions containing industrial effluent”.
One research direction is focusing on the use of wood composite material polymers
[67]. The studies show good behavior and a multitude of uses for wood polymer products,
but there is still a need to develop a more cost-effective fabrication process for the mass
production of wood composites [67].

4. Conclusions
The purpose of this paper was to investigate the field of wood waste and identify if,
in the context of more and more awareness of the impact of the human activity on the
environment and in the global attempt to implement the 17 Sustainable Development
Materials 2021, 14, 7638 15 of 18

Goals proposed by the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, the use of wood waste as
a building material can be a solution to achieve the sustainable development goals.
The major conclusions resulted from this study can be summarized as follows:
- Wood is the only renewable and ecological material that can not only reduce the pro-
duction of CO2 but also store large parts of it. In order to benefit from the use of wood,
we need to consider two main aspects. The first one is to always use wood from sus-
tainably managed forests, and the second one is to find methods to use as much as
possible from the tree, mainly to decrease the amount of wood waste.
- There has been an increased interest in the topic of using wood waste in the last sev-
eral years, especially after 2018, and a switch from the consideration of wood waste
as just a source to generate heat and energy to the use of wood waste as a building
material, and thus a solution to decrease the environmental impact of buildings and
of the construction industry in general, can also be observed.
- All over the world, large quantities of wood waste are produced, and in most cases,
these quantities are not used. Their disposal in landfills creates bigger ecological
problems due to the decomposition of wood and the generation of compounds that
pollute the air, soil or water. As such, besides resolving a pollution situation, we are
dealing with a very low-cost raw material that can be used in various ways.
- As a building material, one method of using wood waste is the production of parti-
cleboards. The main limitation of this use of the waste is that a certain degree of
strength is necessary for the waste, and it must be an uncontaminated wood that can
be shredded into various sizes and then used in the particleboard mix. However, the
use of wood waste for particleboard production is a viable solution, and it has good
results.
- A second method of using wood waste as a building material is the use of waste in
concrete or mortar mixtures. Here we have two main approaches: one is using the
raw material in shape of small particles, e.g., sawdust, and the other is using the re-
mains from burning the wood (the ash) in the concrete composition. The main limi-
tation in this approach is the incompatibility between the cement and the wood. The
cement needs a certain humidity to activate and to increase its strength, while the
wood is acting as an absorbance of humidity, and thus the concrete obtained from
this combination can have significant decrease in mechanical strength; additionally,
a large number of cracks appear on the surface of the elements. Many studies show
that there is the need for a proper mix of ingredients and find that ratios still need
further investigation.
- The general use of building materials made of wood and cement mixtures is as non-
structural elements or filling elements. Another use of this mixture with good results
is in the thermal insulation of buildings.
- A solution to the wood–cement incompatibility can be the replacement of portland
cement with a new type of cement, magnesium oxychloride cement (MOC), which
has good mechanical proprieties and does not depend on the presence of water. This
is a direction that can be explored more in the future.
The general conclusion drawn from this study is that the use of wood waste is be-
coming a more and more interesting topic of research and has many directions that can
be developed, from the use of wood waste to generate renewable energy to the develop-
ment of new sustainable building materials. The forest, and implicitly the wood, is an
immense natural treasure, and finding ways to better use it by developing methods for
the integral use of the wood from trees, including the remains, can surely lead not only to
the fulfillment of the Sustainable Development Goals but also to the better welfare of all
humankind.

Funding: This research received no external funding.

Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable.
Materials 2021, 14, 7638 16 of 18

Informed Consent Statement: Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement: No new data were created or analyzed in this study. Data sharing is
not applicable to this article."
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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